Report on cricket by special committee out soon
Sri Lanka Cricket’s embarrassing stay that eclipsed their T20 World Cup show in Australia, and the betting company, which sponsored the national team during the Asia Cup and a team from the Lanka Premier League (LPL), will be looked by the same committee, Dr. Amal Harsha de Silva, the Secretary to the Sports Ministry, said.
Only last week, a six-member committee, led by a Retired Supreme Court Judge Sarojani Weerawardena, launched investigations into incidents that rocked the team’s stay down under.
Since the appointment by Minister Roshan Ranasinghe himself, the six of them were assigned to uncover Sri Lanka’s series of off-field sagas.
Fair Play News and its logo, subsidiary of an Indian betting company, was worn prominently by the said two teams, coming under a spotlight due to blatant prohibition in wearing unethical logos.
Dr. de Silva this week revealed, they are now tasked into investigating the associations of this betting company with the national team and Kandy Falcons, who wore their logo in the last year of LPL.
“(There’ll be inquiries) with how Danushka Gunatilake got arrested, how the officials and manager conducted themselves. Because one issue is that, there were three officials for one player in that tour. Therefore, Kusala Sarojani is the chairperson investigating into that,” Dr. de Silva, also the President of Cycling Federation of Sri Lanka, explained.
He added, with new issues that are coming up, they are broad-basing their terms of reference into allegations of betting companies, LPL, and granting media contracts and various other things.
“We are widening the scope, in such a way that this committee will be empowered to investigate other allegations as well. Therefore, we’re doing that”.
“That is a very high-powered committee. There is a senior DIG and other top brass of other fields. What we intend to do rather than putting different committees for various things, to give those scope also to them. Therefore, there will be a widened scope”.
“The initial report will be presented in another month’s time”.
Though Kandy Falcons have clearly breached the code of ethics, he refused to agree and said only based on the findings they can see the way forward.
“Overall, there are a lot of allegations. We have to first look into the facts and figures.”
“In one-and-a-half months they will give an interim report about the Australian tour (World Cup). And submit the rest a little later. That is what we expect too. But at the same time, that is up to the committee.”